May 2: Heroes, My Students, Poem from "Kyrie"

Spent most of today doing end-of-semester grading.

This semester has been a tough one for my students.  Many endured financial problems--loss of employment, parents laid off, businesses closed.  Some dealt with other struggles--mental health, physical health, deaths of loved ones.  Like I said, it has been a hell of a couple months for these kids.

Some simply disappeared off my radar, despite my best efforts to reach out to them.  They just stopped communicating.  Others missed due dates or assignments completely.  I have found myself acting as both instructor and mentor and counselor, trying to guide them through the landmines of March and April.

This past Wednesday night, I had my last Zoom class meeting with my writing students.  As I've said, this group of individuals have been through a LOT.  At the end of the class, I said this to them:  "You know, everyone is talking about heroes in the middle of this pandemic.  Nurses and doctors and healthcare workers.  Let me tell you all this:  you're all heroes in my book.  You've all dealt with the craziness of this semester with grace, courage, and humor.  You all deserve medals for surviving."

Heroes come in many guises.  Some wear face shields in emergency rooms.  Others wear badges and face down gun-toting domestic terrorists who call themselves protesters.  And some take on extra jobs to help their parents pay their bills, and they still submit their papers, take their final exams, and show up for virtual classes.

Saint Marty prays for his students tonight.  For health and safety.  Rest and happiness.

poem from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

Snow heaped like a hat, square gray face,
the drift a shawl gathered at the neck--
a mailbox left unshoveled can be the sign,
a spirit crouching there beside the road--
I was at hand, I followed the doctor in:
Go ye therefore into the highways.
Renie had bee the warning, months before
the universal pestilence and woe.
We'd had a late frost, a ruined spring,
a single jay was fretting in the bush,
quick blue smudge in the laden spikes of lilac:
it was an angel singing--don't you see:
it might as well have been a bush on fire.

May 27: Book to Read, Dirty and Tired and Wounded, Heroes

Billy was put to bed and tied down, and given a shot of morphine.  Another American volunteered to watch over him.  This volunteer was Edgar Derby, the high school teacher who would be shot to death in Dresden.  So it goes.

Derby sat on a three-legged stool.  He was given a book to read.  The book was The Red Badge of Courrage, by Stephen Crane.  Derby had read it before.  Now he read it again while Billy Pilgrim entered a morphine paradise.

Sitting in a prisoner of war camp, next to Billy Pilgrim, who is now quietly having a nervous breakdown in a morphine cloud, Edgar Derby is given The Red Badge of Courage to preoccupy himself.  Of course, I would think it would be hard to take your mind off war by reading a book about war.

Of course, Stephen Crane's book is about a young man who is struggling with an impulse to flee from battle, desert his regiment, and run for peace and safety.  At one point in the story, that's exactly what Henry, the main character, does.  Eventually, he returns and marches into battle as a flag bearer.  I'll never forget the last few paragraphs of the book:

It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks, an existence of soft and eternal peace. 

Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.
It's not a pretty picture.  Union and captured soldiers marching along, dirty and tired and wounded.  Crane, just like Vonnegut, does not glorify war in any way.  It's brutal and terrifying, and everyone involved yearns for one thing--"tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks, and existence of soft and eternal peace."  Crane wrote about the American Civil War.  Vonnegut is writing about World War II.  Nobody would argue with the fact that both of these wars were fought for just and noble purposes.  Yet, there is still blood and pain and loss.  Brothers and fathers and sons and daughters and mothers and sisters never returning home.

That is the reality of armed conflict.  Terror and grief.  I'm not saying that sometimes there aren't justifiable reasons for war.  Slavery.  Genocide.  Incredible violations of human rights.  Threats to world peace.  And there are brave men and women from countries all over the world who have or will endure the red sickness of battle for people they will never know.  That is an amazing thing.

As I said last night, I am not a fan of nationalism.  I believe in peace and acceptance and compassion.  Always.  But I am also amazed by people who are willing to put their lives on the line for others.  Police officers.  Firefighters.  Soldiers.  Missionaries.  These people are true heroes in my eyes.  As it says in John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."

Saint Marty is thankful for these heroes today.

February 8: Heroes, Kids, Mythology

Today, I tried to get my mythology students to talk a little bit about heroes.  We're wrapping up our reading of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and I wanted to get into a discussion of heroes, ancient and contemporary.

"Who are your heroes?" I said.

Blank stares.

"Who do you look up to?"  I said.

Blank stares.

"Why are you in college, studying the subject you're studying?"  I said.  "Who inspired you?"

Blank stares.

"Are you all in college just so you can get a degree and make a lot of money?"  I said.

Blank stares and some nodding.

I stood there staring at these kids. 

Finally, a guy in the back row said, "Isn't that why you're here?"

I thought for a few moments, choosing my words.  "Yes," I finally said, "that's exactly why I choose to be a part-time adjunct instructor in the English Department."  I looked around at each kid in the class.  "I'm in it for the money."  I let that sink in for a couple of seconds.  Then I said, "If the only reason you're here is to get a degree that will get you a job that will allow you to make a great deal of money, I really feel sorry for all of you."

Blank stares.

Saint Marty lost a little hope for the future this afternoon.

November 3: Hungry, A Little Tired, Heroes

As the title for this post suggests, I'm a little tired and more than a little hungry.  Last night, I think I ate my weight in left-over Halloween candy when I got home from choir practice.  I couldn't help it.  When I see a Milky Way in a bag of candy, I just have to eat it.  Of course, the solution to that problem is not looking in the bag of candy, but that would be like Edmund Hillary seeing Everest and saying to Tenzing, "Naah, let's just take a picture."

A couple days ago, I got into a discussion with the students of my mythology class about heroes.  I asked them to name a few modern-day heroes.  Of course, they started shouting things like "Batman!" and "Spiderman!" and "My mom!"  Basically, the discussion was going no where at light speed.  So I walked to the chalkboard and wrote "Mother Teresa."  That got the ball rolling.  Pretty soon we had a good list:  Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks among them.

Then I asked my students to tell me what all of these modern heroes had in common.  That list came fairly quickly, too:  strong beliefs; putting beliefs into action; courage; strength in convictions; fighting injustice.  You get the idea.  (Sorry that second list isn't in parallel structure, but my brain is without caffeine.)

The whole exercise was meant to kick off our discussion of the section on Greek heroes from the textbook.  You know, Gilgamesh, Perseus, Heracles.  However, our discussion also got me thinking about heroes and how, in today's world, there a very few people I would consider living heroes.  People to emulate or admire.  (Unless you count Claire Danes, but that may be just old-fashioned lust on my part.)  Literally, all of the "modern" heroes we listed on the board were dead.

The world doesn't have a whole lot of heroes anymore.  There are people I would describe as heroic in their struggles with illness (Steve Jobs, Patrick Swayze).  There are people I would describe as having performed heroic deeds (Chesley Sullenberger, who landed that airplane safely in the Hudson River, comes to mind).  But real heroes, who put their lives on the line for the good of the world.  Very few.  Firefighters.  Police officers.  Soldiers fighting for a just cause.  All are anonymous, heroes without faces.

Instead we have a world where children look up to people like Justin Bieber and Adele and Kim Kardashian.  People who have talent, or people who have a talent for creating publicity.  They aren't the kind of heroes I want my children to have.

I'm not being a crank here.  I'm really looking for people to hold in high esteem.  People I can tell my kids to imitate.  There used to be heroes like that in the world.

Saint Marty needs someone to look up to.

I need a hero, as Bonnie Tyler sings